Thursday, September 7, 2017

Here we have an interesting compendium of original resources from a land in East Africa to examine.

Can you look at this picture and cite where and/or why on earth it was ever shot. Hint: an East African nation. Match 90% Kenya. Match 80%Uganda. Match 40% Tanzania. Match 90% Malawi. Match 0% Ethiopia.Settle for two highest factoring selectees:

Odds: Kenya is a savannah land. Evens. There are swampy grounds aplenty in formally tse tse fly-prone marshlands of Western Kenya and the Coast. Besides, almost any rain puddle in the world can look like this.

Odds: Malawi is warm, tropical country. Evens. There are swampy grounds around Lake Malawi and other reservoirs in the country.

Universal odds (Malawi): It is possible for any place in the world to have a puddle mired in slime like this one. Universal evens (Malawi) No other region other than East Africa is featured here (only GPS placement is lacking).

Assessment: Since all odds point to Kenya and evens too, and the fact that the photographer hails from this land, we do not need scientific Geo-maps or the date of the picture but to conclude that the picture is taken in any part of Kenya during the rainy season, March though May or October through December. Facts rest.

Wednesday, June 7, 2017

Eclipsing the old pre-independence railway to a twittering old flame, the Standard Gauge Railway was over 1300 kilometers in length when it finally reached Malaba, in late 2010s, earmarking the initial phase of connecting the three neighboring countries mutual to the agreement including south Sudan, Rwanda and Uganda to Kenya.

With construction beginning in fall 2013, the first phase ended in early 2017 before the president inaugurated the Madaraka Express train that made headway to Nairobi's depot on the eve of the country's freedom day on June 1 of the year.

Before its completion, the railway attracted eclectic views from both the populace and media alike. In tandem with construction was the relocation sagas along the line especially around Nairobi, in the first phase, and later along the Rift valley belt with some officials coming to book for soliciting bribes from families seeking compensation along the line.

The immediate fact sheet of the construction of the railway dates back to 2009 when the country's then regime ratified a memorandum with its then biggest East African trading counterpart, Uganda, to engineer a railway with modern gauges of less than a meter apart that would have electrical propulsion capabilities. There would follow a tripartite agreement pitting Rwanda to the prior ratification with the signing taking place in August, 2013.

The Chinese consortium that constructed the railway had to fulfill its mandate in several lines including one to Rwanda that had to hail at Kigali by 2018 from its Mombasa initialization. The second line had to reach Kampala in proper infrastructural time via Malaba in Western Kenya from its initial phase of 2014.

Upon completion of phase one, which received a lot of celebration due to, in part, high speed, low fare and acclimatization of most Kenyans' dreams to reach Mombasa in less than the minimum 8 hours it used to take buses to make it to the coast, the railway introduced sanity features to surface transportation in Kenya. For instance, the rail, running parallel most of the way with the then unruly, single track A109 highway to Mombasa, had beautiful, terra-cotta embankments, modern offices and accommodation villas, plus stations every regular number of kilometers, besides high rise flyover bridges running kilometers on end in some places, and the top cake of it all, the availability of an aerial electric line, all within a non-stop perimeter wall.

With funding coming from a China-based bank that provided ninety percent of the funding with the Kenya government settling the remainder, the financing of phase one alone, in 2017, was equal to almost an eighth of the country's gross budget for that year which stood at KSH2.6 trillion.

With perfect gradients and topographical maximization, the costly infrastructure project that was SGR ended the transportation deficit of delivering goods and passengers from the coast. It also created a more sustainable economic bloc that is modern-day East African Community (EAC).

Thursday, April 20, 2017

Parasitic Capitalism in East Africa as Digital Working Creates Neo Africa

Strategists have repeatedly warned that the on-surge of a digital gig economy will deprive the creators’ backyards of handy manpower-as they concentrate fully on the digital companies’ math regalia. However, the biggest concerns are that, despite the worker vacuum these 24-hour companies create, once they flourish, they do little to develop the region in which they ‘operate,’ with the nitizen-approved excuse that by virtue of being online, they are in a global village and can thus develop any part of the earth: tongue in cheek for personal enrichment through the cloak of the World Wide Web.

In East Africa, the future is as bleak. In fact, Kenya, according to an Internet hosting company based on the continent, ranked back in 2017, as conceited as this may eventually turn out to be in coming years, as having the best Internet connectivity in the continent. Be it as it may, and as much as the youth are flocking to SEO-related informal careers, leaving manual work to old men, and as much as the region, with severe economic deprivation is becoming the farcical no country for old men and young men alike, but for the monied few, a new dark reality is revisiting the East African digital world slowly.

Hear it now:

As youth flock to digitized editions, contribute tons of copywrite material in exchange of a few dimes, most of which go to their local outsourcing agents, who in turn sell it, sometimes in 1000% profit to their rich clients in the West, the pension of the post-college writer, designer, videographer or artist is becoming a pipe dream.

For one, once the fortunes of the agents and their outsourcing companies nod for the sunset of retirement due to the lucrativeness of parasitizing on talented yet monetarily inconvenienced youth who can’t break the shackles if they want to put bread on the table or pay for their university fees, these companies abandon their workers in ex-ma-china fashion. Because there is usually no contract, per se, the worker cannot resort to legal representation and has to hunt for the next netizen-boss online who he will never see or even eschew (due to barrage of work) until he discerns a blank screen on where the former site used to be.

Therefore, even as East Africa blossoms in cyberspace and creates jobs for people who otherwise would not ever dream for a bed of roses for lack of jobs for which they have studied in the formal sector, it is an early call for a future of parasitic capitalism in the digital context of the region…..

Friday, August 23, 2013

How Far To a Central Common
Securities Wing in the East African Community?

It has been a long time since 1977, the date the EAC
bloc collapsed courtesy of some little discourtesies of leadership across the
borders. Flashback more than four decades later and one realizes the progress,
albeit gradual and sometimes not fulfilling, of the fully-fledged regional
community. From shared ideals of the ‘60’s to a common market of the 2010’s,
now the East African Community awaits the final straw of its success story, a
common securities market with a single currency.

The East African Business
Council

One of the momentous areas of inclusiveness that the EAC
leadership can claim is establishing the East African Business Council (EABC).
This, via its Strategic Plan, will oversee the fast-tracking of the common
agreements that will pave the way for a fast harmonization framework. If the
EAC will become the next European Union, at least as a growing formality, then
EABC must address the following areas:

Common Securities. Currently, the initial phase
of harmonizing the major capital markets of the inclusive states has but a
year to complete. It began in 2011 and culminates 2014, ready for the take
off of the ultimate phase that lasts up to 2019. The hindrance, however,
is the eclectic mixture of tiny and large markets across the borders.

Kenya has shown acumen in claiming the largest piece
of the cake at the expense of neighbors. 14 local entities have border-listed in
Security Exchanges, including seven in Kampala, five in Dar es Salaam and two
in Kigali. In comparison, only an electric-generation company from Kampala has
found a listing in Nairobi. This is the inequality that the EABC ought to rein
in before a single securities’ market comes into existence.

Local companies that are building equity in regional
securities include EABL, KQ, KCB, Equity Bank and Nation Media, alongside
Centum Investments Co. Ltd.

Extracting non-tariff barriers. Some of the
freedoms that have always failed in their maturation stages, due to conflict
of financial interests, in sovereign nations, are taxes. The region has no
harmony in the levy-enforcement design. It is the purpose of EABC to
remove many of these unnecessary barriers and make the region one that
enjoys a single levy. Happy news is that at the onset of the Common Market
in July 2010, five nations, devoid of Kenya, eradicated duty-enforcement
across the borders.

Rwanda also helped lobby the removal of tariffs that
hindered the mobility of transit content from ports to landlocked nations. This
saw the region increase a one-time border fee but remove barriers that
protracted the entry of goods from one country to another via long-distance
vehicles.

A Snapshot of the Recent
Past

In theory, a shared currency was to have made headway
by 2012. This became a pipe dream, at least for now, until the ratification of
the common securities agenda, which vaunts two phases, beginning 2011 to 2019,
came in place. Had a shared denomination hit the region in 2012, this could
have meant eradicating the various barriers including the free-duty premise
that only Kenya, the region’s economic powerhouse, had declined to sign.

The predecessor to the common currency, in the offing,
has been the Common Market. This came up in July 2010, when member signers
removed barriers to trade, particularly on long-distance carriers, through the
agency of especially Rwanda.

Why the Common Securities may
not be Long Overdue

Courtesy of the East African Business Council, a lot
of new happenings are apparent from a civil point of view. These include
private-sector partnerships, workshops and labor harmonization, across the
board.

Some of the events perpetually on the calendar are national
employers’ organizations’ conferences that seek to proffer better labor relations
across the borders. This means doing away with diverse entry visas throughout
the region. The EAC Single Tourist Visa will be the new boy in town once labor
policies go under the microscope.

Vimal Shah, the chair of Kenya Private Sector Alliance
(KEPSA) is the new head of EABC for tenure of 12 months:

“Our key areas of advocacy include…the removal of Non-tariff
Barriers…and the introduction of the EAC Single Tourist Visa.”

Another key area of harmonization is that of
standards. A conference going back to 2012 showed that even if traders can
cross the lines on the map in search of new pastures scot-free, they have to
cope with new regulatory mechanisms guiding the kind of goods they can sell in a
new land. There is KeBS in Kenya just like Uganda has its own, and so does
Tanzania, Burundi and Rwanda. Each presents quality regulations that may label legitimate
goods contraband in their own jurisdictions. This is one of the major
challenges that intra-regional commerce brings to distributors.

Benefits of Securities

The secret behind a common securities market, such as,
the one the EAC bloc is contemplating is the agility of movement of financial,
asset, non-asset and futures trade. According to a head of a
section in the Nairobi bourse (NSE), one market for all stakeholders would
ensure that funds transfer easily with no inconveniences.

“EAC investors should be able to invest in other EAC
domestic markets through local intermediaries,” he said in the second week of
July.

Thus, it is fair to say that the integration of the
EAC as a Common Market may only be the first step of a deserved common securities
market. Though the transition is taking a snail’s pace, no one knows whether or
not the fair wind of change that will drive the ship fast to harbor is in the
East African Business Council. Where leaders have failed, these business-savvy
connivers may yet help toggle the fifth gear. Let the gears hold for a while as
every one waits for the promise that a common currency will be in place by the
year 2015.

Furthermore,
the involvement of regional leaders may be
the remaining jerk that will make the integration a practical one for everyone,
including inter-border securities companies

Tuesday, May 8, 2012

Futuristic Eastafrica

Sunday, March 25, 2012

10. Panari Sky Center, off Mombasa Road. Grand architecture with squat,
imposing glass-work when viewing the facade from a close angle. Linear,
cube shaped, tall structure when viewing the cone of the building from
the South Eastern bend of the highway. Silver, neutral hue of the
all-pane building highlighting the colonnades of same color and ,
seemingly material, with flying angels that give it a 'sky' identity.

09. KICC on Harambee Avenue. Barely missed the list but for the round
curves, inter-planetary curves that give it a futuristic epithet not
seen in many other buildings. Furthermore it has some stunning open
attic at the top for revelers at the top of a skyscraper under the
sun.Wonder how it could have looked like if the Founding Father had kept
his word to make it 60 stories.

08. Times Tower, off Haile Selassie Avenue. The intricate hexagonal,
block nature of the tallest building in the city makes it inaccessible.
It is insignificant in its grayish silver from afar, but becomes
overwhelming from a proximate vantage point due to its solid, grounded
foundation. Novel in the sense that it contains some alluring paintings
(Gothic?) embossed on its ground floor entrance.

07.Yalah Tower, Biashara Street. Contains some flying buttresses that
make it quite airy , almost a gem in the midst of other laid-down
buildings in its surrounding. It brings that slice of the Abu Dhabi to
Nairobi, making you feel for the first time to be in an oriental locale,
by the sea. For as you know, the building , I was told in an interview,
was made to resemble a ship, a dhow by its owner. Made by the Chinese
by the way.

06. Nation Center, Kimathi Street. The bottle-like aspect of this
masterpiece at the center of the mass media in Kenya is always
intriguing, with the horizontal silver-and-white lines effervescing with
friendliness. It is a tall office building that appears like a
plaything for a child showing just how the globe keeps turning daily
bringing news events to the world without caring a whit about
commentary.

05. The Rahimtullah, Upper Hill. Seems like all gray, silverly things
win the appeal of the neutral bibliographer. This tall building with a
spike pointing to the heavens in Upperhill in its bright silver color
and an imposing barricade of mammoth blocks, as if to tilt it from its
off-the-cliff position in Upperhill gives an illusion of direction to
the Nairobian. It appears to be in Westlands sometimes, others at the
city center, while yet other times, where it should be. Do not trust to
its triangular linear projection just like you should not treat its
protruding scaly bars kindly too. Pass it in awe only for its beauty.

04. Teleposta, off Kenyatta Avenue. If an award were to go to any piece
of architecture with these merits, then they would go to the tower of
the GPO: Elegant, cone-like., two towers side by side, inviting
yellow-gold color, slim and modernistic. It is the only building in the
city that can be seen from almost every direction despite being in the
extreme end rather than the heart and despite being in the shadow of its
tall, squat neighbor, Nyayo House. If any of the tower is unseen, then
its robotic, perpendicular mast is.

03. Victoria Towers, Upper Hill. Elusive, phantasmagoria of blue
illusions. All glass and almost a statement that the theory of
relativity was after all right in that inverted and normally standing
shapes can co-exist. The building is not so tall but it has immaculate
curves that seem to be wrapping around each other in bottle and wing
fashion.

02. Delta Corner, Westlands. In its finishing touches, Delta Center is
by far the closest replication of how the Twin Towers in New York could
have looked like in this city. In fact the 18 story twin towers are
about to be possessed by the leading banker in the globe. It is a
double-barreled masterpiece in the offing.

01. The Citadel, Westlands. Built in a hidden corner of the city, the
Citadel deserves acclaim as the most futuristic of all Nairobi
buildings for it overcomes the theories of Roman-Greco architecture of
adhering to form. It simply lacks form especially in its upper portion.
Though solid and even linear, its color interplay overshadows any notion
of solidity. Perhaps the car park underneath also gives the concept of a
floating structure. It deserves the name citadel for its lack of grasp,
being almost church-like, which makes it invincible. It is like a piece
of graphic rendered solid in the air.

Thursday, September 23, 2010

Brief Introduction To East Africa

East Africa is made up of countries on the horn of Africa that comprises
of Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania. Kenya and Tanzania have ports on the
Indian Ocean whereas Uganda is landlocked. The three countries also
share a common interior water mass, Lake Victoria, whose largest portion
is on the Ugandan side. Economically, the region is an agricultural
society whose main exports include, tea, coffee and livestock products.
It also enjoys industrial growth in areas like telecommunications,
fines arts and manufacturing.

The political structure of the three countries follows the Commonwealth
form of Constitutional Republics. The latest exception to this system
occurred in Kenya, which promulgated a new constitution on 27th August
2010 setting up a county system of government. Other countries in the
region including, Rwanda and Burundi are categorised as East African
states through the shared EAC bloc, which is on its way to becoming a
Common Market.

Tourism is a multimillion industry in the region due to the many
national parks and diverse wildlife and the sandy beaches of Mombasa.
The Kilindini harbor is the entry port for much of the foreign trade.
Uganda has traditionally received imports via the port on the
Mombasa-Uganda railway.

For any outsider to the East African Community (EAC),
the fast rate in which the Common Market Protocol has been effected
would seem incredible at first. A key prop to this assumption is that
for an economic bloc to cross the barriers of the Customs Union, which
is usually the precursor to a single market that embraces all states,
within a record time, would require inexorable joint stamina.

The European Union, whose economic
integration took several decades to implement is a measure of how long
the process can take to implement. This is exactly what the five states
that currently make up the EAC (Kenya, Tanzania, Rwanda, Burundi and
Uganda) are set to achieve beginning the first of July 2010.

One can attribute these positive steps to the mutual cooperation between the five border states of East Africa.
Unlike Europe, which is a heterogeneous society with disparate
geographical barriers like the sea, and different political structures,
the East African countries share common values like heritage and have a
similar political system derived from the British. However, in order to
realize a Single Market in this region, there are several milestones,
the EAC
needs to cover by the by. These challenges include the ratification of
the four freedoms and the show of political will to give security of
tenure to already existing freedoms among the states. This will pave way
for the formation of a common currency.

These cross border freedoms that need
ratification and implementation include convenient and cheap air
transport, making the securities markets regional, enforcing free
broadcasting rights across the region, customizing educational
requirements, and modernizing travel and work documents.

Tuesday, September 21, 2010

Title: The Anti-Cousin
Synopsis: It is the year 2037 in postmodern EA Nation, a federal state
formed by East African countries. Against a background of a rotten court
system, two individuals are on the run after writing treasonable content.
Now the question is, who between them has done the capital wrong? Or is it
the state that is to blame? A forensic officer and robotic agents are out to
find out. The judgment on these two individuals, if caught, will resort in
the subtle salvation of a nation or the indictment of a whole society.
Finally, will the first person narrator,who is also the protagonist be finally
saved whereas the real culprit is brought to book?

The 63000 plus word novel is written in a
pseudo-surrealistic style that is deemed best to highlight in an undertone
the evils of impunity. The message is targeted at the here and now: the
future state, though realistic, is just a technical cap to drive the point
home.

Followers

About Me

From the outset I have been an afternoon
person whose bulk of work is fated then. I love walking regularly in the
streets of my city, Nairobi, under the constellations of the Milky Way
that succeeds the beautiful tropical sunset. Spending an evening at a
performing arts venue is my passion. I indulge in creative work every
now and then especially writing. That is why I'm here in this blog.
Ardent listener of the BBC. Won't somebody post a comment on my posted
novel? Anybody out there under the stars?